FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Respectability sucks, Rhia reflected as she flipped through cargo postings. She was currently enjoying the glamorous trappings of that life, such as being tucked into the booth of a cheap bar a good half hour's walk from the port where her ship was docked. At least the floor wasn't sticky and the beer wasn't stale. Her flop-ear twitched as she skimmed through postings; that one required more capacity than she had, that one would probably cost her more in fuel than it'd pay, that one dead-ended on a colony that was so small it wouldn't have anything to take back the other way for a good five years.

The cur, for there was no better way to describe her jumble of short, brindle fur and mismatched eyes, had just about given up on her hunt for profit, or even, frankly, money, when a fresh beer appeared in front of her. Rhia looked up; beer never appeared out of nowhere on its own. Attached to the paw that still held the base of the beer was another dog with a short, lean, coat like it was painted on. Tired -- she looked like someone who'd traded a habit of long days for skipping sleep entirely.

Rhia raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the beer. "What's that gonna cost me?"

The other dog sighed and tried on a tired smile. "Hear me out? I want to offer you a job."

Rhia shook her head. "A beer and a job offer? No way this is going to be worth it." She tossed her pad in her bag.

The other dog's shoulder sagged and her ears twitched. It wasn't quite a puppy look, it was far too worn for that, but there was a hint of the same pleading. "Hear me out, please? We could really use your help."

Rhia, halfway out of her seat, sat down heavily and rubbed the bridge of her muzzle. "Sonofabitch." She waved at the seat across from her. "Fine. Talk." She pulled the beer towards her as the other dog sat down. "Name?"

"Amélie."

"Ok, Amelie--"

"Amélie."

Rhia paused. "Ok... Am_é_lie."

The lean dog nodded. Must have been close enough.

"What can I do for you?"

"I need you to deliver cargo to Terre de Richard," Amélie answered.

Rhia eyed her beer. "You didn't post to the job board and you sought me out in person, so what's the catch?" She waved a paw in a circular motion. "The whole story."

Amélie shifted in her seat, then leaned on the table, sighed, and began. "The shipment is opposed by the dominant corporation on the planet, Métaux des Étoiles. I'm part of a community of miners living in a company town who are trying to organize, and while MdE can't take direct action against us, they claim we're engaged in an illegal strike and have clamped down on all shipments in and out of Richard."

Rhia took a long drink of her beer, buying herself time to think. She found herself torn between it sounding fun and sounding like a really good way to get blacklisted. That wasn't the end of the world, but it sure would make it hard to go legitimate. Or at least...seem to go legitimate. If she was fully honest with herself, sticking it to a corp abusing its employees had a pretty strong appeal, too. Still, sticking it to the man didn't necessarily pay for little things like fuel and repairs and food.

She set her glass down. "So. Pissing off MdE won't be cheap."

Amélie snorted. "It certainly hasn't been!" She slid a pad across the table. "Here's what we can offer."

Rhia eyed it. The number was, well, it was technically a better profit than any of the other gigs were offering. She probably wouldn't get shot at, either. Still.

She pushed the pad back across the table. "You're asking a lot for that sum."

Amélie sighed, seeming to deflate. "Yeah. But it's all we have."

"Really? I'd heard mining paid pretty good."

The lean dog snorted again. "Yeah but it's all in escrow until we hit performance goals. The company provides 'Everything We Need,' balanced against our pay, of course." Her tone made it clear just how much she believed the company's line. "But yeah, sure, it's good money if you live to the other side of it." She waved a paw at the pad sitting between them. "That's everything we could put together from assets they don't control. Personal savings, etc."

Rhia eyed the pad again. She'd been offered a lot for her services before, but never everything. Her ears flicked as she resisted, but she didn't last long. She pulled the pad back across the table. "Fine. I'll do it."

Amélie's ears perked up and she sighed with relief. "Thank the gods. You were our last hope. At least, our last good one."

Rhia cocked an eyebrow. "How many folks turned you down?"

"More than I care to admit."

"You know that makes me sound like the bottom of the barrel, right?"

Amélie squirmed. "Err. I guess it does. I mean, we just didn't know where to start, right?"

Rhia snorted. "It's fine. I guess organizing doesn't come with a pamphlet on grey-market transporters, eh?"

"Eh well, if ICEM has one, I haven't seen it."

"So much for organizing." Rhia waved a paw in the general direction of the docks. "Do we have to pick it up, or do you have it here already?"

"It's at the docks," Amélie said. "I'll be glad to stop paying storage fees for it."

Rhia drained her beer and stood. "Well, lead on, let's get you loaded up and flight plans filed."

---

Rhia sat in the cockpit, resting her paws up on the console. Loading had been a lot of work, even with the help of two longshoremen. Flying with just one passenger meant they'd been able to trade stacking the extra crew cabins to the ceiling with cryo-packed chickens and plant starts instead of packing them in the hallways and heads. Even then, it had been a near thing. Rhia was glad they hadn't needed to use any of her smuggler's holds, but she kept that part to herself. No need to go sharing everything.

Her passenger was sitting at the co-pilot's station. The controls had been locked, of course -- Rhia wasn't about to trust a passenger with that. Mostly, the Lady Giddens' navigational system was plenty adequate to handling the grunt work of moving the ship and her cargo between the stars, and Rhia simply sat in the cockpit because it felt weird to sit in her cabin and let the ship fly itself between jumps. At jumpgates, she had to talk to the gatekeepers, anyway. Computers might do all the hard math, but they hadn't yet replaced a pilot's intuition about when not to do something. Plus, it meant customers had someone to yell at if something went wrong.

In this case, however, her customer was simply chatting with her. That wasn't normal, but then, Rhia had a feeling she'd left normal behind on Frake's Station.

Rhia dragged herself out of thought to the conversation at hand. Amélie had been explaining what had driven the workers on Terre de Richard to strike. It was pretty standard: poor hours, dangerous conditions, low pay, minimal support for injuries. The same ways employers had been abusing employees for millennia.

"So anyway," Amélie continued, "After MdE refused to replace the helmets damaged in the last cave-in, we'd had enough."

"Why are you guys down in the mines, anyway? Can't robots do that?" Rhia asked.

Amélie gave her a look. "Can't robots do your job?"

Rhia waved a paw at the controls. "I mean, it is right now. But not all the time. Not really."

"No?" Amélie's eyebrow had gone up.

"Not at gates, or on landing. They're capable enough, but nobody will let them," Rhia answered.

"I-- Hmm. Yeah I guess that makes sense." Amélie shrugged. "In any case, whether robots could do our jobs or not, we're getting paid to do it. Or at least, that's the theory."

"Guess you don't get paid if you're on strike, eh?"

Amélie laughed. "If only! There's no way in hell MdE would do that unless they had to, and they surely don't. So we're on our own, hence our rather poor pay scale."

"Mmm." Rhia didn't think there was much she could add to that.

Amélie waved her paws vaguely. "At any rate. That's where we are. MdE might as well be trying to kill us, so we're on strike until they meet our demands."

"You uh, you think they're gonna get better after a strike?" Rhia couldn't help but ask.

"Well, as good as they're compelled to be, and of course if they deviate, we'll strike again. And take 'em to court."

"Uh-huh. And in the mean time?"

"In the mean time, we get by and have cargo haulers like you bring us what we need."

"Smugglers like me, you mean."

Amélie ducked her head. "I suppose. Less illegal than it is unwelcome. We have a right to receive supplies. That much is in the colony laws."

Rhia waved at her console. "I noticed we're still landing at an MdE port."

"They own all the spaceports. But it's legal cargo so you know, they have to let you land." Amélie looked like she almost believed it, too.

"Well I guess we'll find out when we get there, won't we!" Rhia looked at her passenger. "Do you have a backup plan if they don't let us land?"

"Uh..."

"No. Great. I guess we'll just have to work with what they give us, won't we?"

Amélie snorted.

"Right then." She took the yoke in one paw and reached over to key the comm circuit with the other. "Terre de Richard Control, this is the Lady Giddens, requesting approach clearance for Landing Zone Six."

There was a brief pause, then, "Lady Giddens, you are cleared to LZ Six, Pad Zero-Three. Use approach Two-Five Up."

"I copy, Control. LZ Six, Pad Three, Approach Two-Five Up. Out." She looked at Amélie. "Alia iacta est."

---

Rhia sat in a tiny interrogation cell, one meter by two if it was anything. A desk took up most of the space along one wall, and the hard plastic chair for subjects was crammed in the corner at one end of it. In front of the desk was a high-backed chair that looked like it had come from the high end of the cheap office supply shop. It felt like a parody of an old cop drama, because while it looked like the place had been furnished from the cast offs of an office renovation forty years prior, nothing was worn and she'd seen a plaque commemorating the founding of the colony only five years prior. She wondered if MdE had a department dedicated to designing these spaces, or if they bought them out of some awful catalog.

Rhia slouched down in the chair and put her boots up on the wall, stretching her legs and letting her short-furred her tail hang off the edge of the seat. She crossed her arms and eyed the uniformed wolf seated in the big chair. He had a lean build for a wolf, which might have made him seem unimposing, but he carried himself well, and he currently sat in the big chair by the door, completely blocking her in to the room. The messaging was not subtle. Worse, was the way he simply sat there, quietly doing paperwork -- he wasn't just in control, he wasn't concerned about her in the least. She far preferred the simple pissing match of an interrogator bristling and growling at her. Instead, she was just bored out of her skull.

"Would you please put your paws down?" The wolf didn't look up from his paperwork.

Rhia wasn't sure if he was just shuffling between pages on his pad or if he was actually still filling them out. She could believe either.

"Why," she asked.

"Because its about thirty pages of paperwork to document the marks on the wall and get them cleaned up." He flicked his ears, then he turned to look at her. "Oh, and to bill you for it."

Rhia sat up, her boots crashing into the deck. "What now?!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Ah-hah." He gestured at the ceiling vaguely. "Metals d'Etoilles is very cost-conscious, and since we have excellent video documentation of you leaving marks on the wall, it'll be trivial to pass that cost on to you."

Rhia groaned and rubbed her muzzle. "Ugh." She eyed the wolf. "Are you going to ask me questions, or what?"

He shrugged. "Probably."

Rhia noticed his uniform was light blue, rather than the dark grey that she'd seen on the thugs, er, security professionals, who'd brought her to this tiny cubicle. Coffin. No, cubicle. No need to start thinking like that. "You not with the corp?" She waved at his uniform. "So pale and unthreatening, not like that doom and gloom the other guys had."

He raised an eyebrow, but kept his focus on his paperwork.

Rhia shifted in her seat. She would have preferred a loud, angry interrogation. Snarling she could deal with, but just being cooped up in the tiny space with nothing to focus on was getting to her. The bastard.

The silence stretched on and she found herself starting to fidget. Finally, she growled and snapped, "Fine! What do you want?"

The wolf didn't look at her. "Hmm?"

"What do you want? Why am I here? You've had me here for hours and haven't said a thing! What is it?"

"Hours?" he asked mildly, looking at her. "It's been twenty minutes."

"What?!" She couldn't help pinning her ears back. "No. What?"

The wolf nodded. "Twenty ...," he glanced at his pad, "Two minutes. Give or take half a minute."

"That's impossible. It feels like hours!" Rhia fidgeted. She must be losing her edge, and she didn't want to admit it to this cop.

"Would I lie to you?" He spread spread his paws in what she assumed was his best non-threatening look.

"You're a cop," she snapped, "So yes."

He finally chuckled at that. "Fair enough. And, close enough."

"You're not a cop? You're cop-adjacent? What, some sort of rent-a-mook dock cop?" Rhia eyed him again, but the uniform was understated enough that it didn't look like the grasping bling-fest of the typical rent-a-drone not-a-cop outfits. She'd seen plenty of those. They probably would have yelled at her like on the vids.

The wolf snorted. "Hardly."

She raised her own eyebrow at that. "Oh, there I touched a nerve."

He shrugged. "Professional pride."

She waved at the uniform. "Soooo...what are you?"

The wolf, whose name she still hadn't gotten, sat up and straightened his uniform. "I am an Investigative Officer of the Confederation of Democratic Planets Space Forces, Internal Defense Division."

"CDPSF IDD?" Rhia shook her head. "You guys didn't put much effort into your acronym, did you?"

"It wasn't a concern," the wolf replied, stiffly.

"Well that's a first." She shrugged. "So you're a fed. In.... A backwater space port? Who did you piss off?"

His ears flicked and she caught a hint of his hackles rising at her comment. She'd definitely hit on something. "The real question, Ms...," he glanced at his pad, "Rhia?"

"Just Rhia."

"Uh-huh. The real question, Ms. Rhia, is who did you piss off? Because you're the one sitting in an interrogation room right now."

She gestured at the wolf. "You're here with me." Rhia thought he'd been doing better when he wasn't talking. He certainly had that part down.

He raised an eyebrow. "True enough. But only one of us is getting paid to be here."

She crossed her arms. "Hmph. What's your name, anyway, Mr. CDPSFIDD? Cidipsfid?"

He snorted. "Agent Lombardi will suffice."

"Well at least that's easy. Fine, Agent Lombardi, what do you do that you get paid to sit in this tiny box with me?" Rhia asked.

Here, Agent Lombardi -- Rhia was annoyed she hadn't come up with a good nickname for him yet -- leaned back in his chair and tapped his pad. "Ms. Rhia, you are here with me today because Métaux d'Étoiles is 'concerned' that you may be engaging in shipping in support of an illegal strike, which is, of course, a crime."

"Illegal stri--!" Rhia sat up sharply. "Damn, that's rich!"

"Do tell." The smug bastard was probably hoping she'd hang herself if he gave her enough rope.

"My sources tell me the workers have the right to strike and there's nothing illegal ferrying cargo to them." She crossed her arms and glared at the wolf.

"Is that all? Your sources must not have coached you very well." He leaned back in his chair and picked up his pad. "Amélie Rochefourt, perhaps?" His pronunciation was irritatingly correct.

Rhia simply glared at him.

"Fine, then, Ms. Rhia. Your Ms. Rochefourt and her miners do indeed have the right to strike under certain conditions, but Métaux d'Etoiles contends that they are not abiding by those conditions. It will be a matter for the courts to decide. Until then, based on their determination that the strike is illegal, MdE are treating all shipments in and out of Terre de Richard as being at high risk of contraband and thus subject to a very detailed inspection." He lifted his paws in a shrug. "I'm afraid it could take some time." Here, he leaned forward. "Now, if you cooperate with the interview process, I'm sure that we'll find your ship is only a medium contraband risk; that inspection is significantly less disruptive."

Rhia watched Lombardi watching her for several long moments as she considered. She was pretty fucked any way she sliced it. She might not have had any "special cargo" aboard, but she wasn't exactly excited about them tossing her ship and possibly, probably, finding the hide-holes she'd added. Worse than that, she was sure they'd document those hide-holes and at the very least they would never go uninspected on this world. At the worst, the after-market compartments would end up documented on her ship's records and every customs inspector from here to the core would know about them. That would just about wreck her.

Looking at Lombardi, she figured he'd go for it. He seemed to be a lot more competent than your average border cop. Bastard.

"Fuck it, fine. What do you want to know?"

---

Rhia kicked her paws up on the table in the Lady Giddens' lounge. It wasn't a big space, but it had room enough for the small number of people the ship was rated for to share the room and still have a modicum of personal space. The cabins were, charitably, cozy, and sitting in the lounge gave her a chance to look at something that was more than two meters away without having to stare at a view screen. That didn't really count, even if they were pretty good at simulating distance.

Amélie sat across the space from her, paws kicked up on the other end of the table. "Well, fuck," she said.

"Yeah," Rhia answered.

"I mean, it could be worse. Nothing was impounded."

"Yeah, but it's still on my ship. You don't get your stuff, I don't get paid, which y'know, fair enough, but nobody is happy here."

Amélie snorted. "MdE is probably pretty happy. And I'm sure that Lombardi bastard is pleased with himself."

Rhia nodded. "Mmm. Probably. He seemed to take a certain pride in his work."

"Grilled you did he?" Amélie asked.

Rhia rubbed the bridge of her muzzle. "Ugh, yes. We must have spent two hours going back and forth over my story and my background and... Ugh."

"Anything interesting come up?"

"Just the stuff I got caught for, and a few things I almost got caught for." Rhia shrugged. "So you know, not too much. You gotta get caught a little, or you got no cred, but too much and you're just bad at it, you know?"

Amélie shook her head. "You know, I really don't. I'm a miner. That's not in our wheelhouse."

Rhia snorted. "No, I guess not."

Amélie let out a sigh. "Shame about Lombardi, though, eh?"

"Shame?" Rhia cocked her head.

"He's a pretty sharp looking wolf, if it weren't for the whole cop thing." Amélie waved a paw vaguely. "I mean, I kinda like a guy in uniform, but the whole agent of oppression thing is a real turn off."

Rhia chuckled. "Yeah, there's that." She pondered her memory of the agent. "Yeah I mean... maybe if I could see him without the uniform, y'know?"

Amélie gave her a rather pointed grin. "Without the uniform, ehhh?"

"What? Oh! Damnit." Rhia snorted. "Although... Sure? And without, say, grilling me for hours just so I can get out of having my ship tossed stem to stern."

"Yeah. Oh well." Amélie shrugged. "So uh... You were in there for a lot longer than I was, so I had some time to make a few calls."

"They don't have you guys locked down here?" Rhia asked.

"Oddly enough, no. The communications contract is handled by a different company and they don't really care about our strike." Amélie replied.

"Small favors, I guess."

"Just so." Amélie waved a paw in the air. "In any case, I got to talking with my folks, and we think we have an idea about how to make this work."

"Yeah? That'd be something."

Amélie nodded. "Yeah. We just have to break your ship a little."

"Um..." Rhia flicked her ears. "I have a question or two."

Amélie grinned. "I figured. In short, we figure that if you take off with your cargo full of not-contraband, and you suffer an emergency and need to land in the field, you might just need to shove it all out the back just so you can limp back to port for repairs. And from there we can arrange for our mechanics to get you ship-shape again." She paused, hearing the pun. "Err, as it were."

Rhia cocked her head and considered for a bit. "It could work. I guess you have mechanics here at the port?"

Amélie nodded. "We do! Two of them are quite sympathetic, so we'll just have to time this so they can work on it. Shouldn't be a problem."

"Uh-huh. And I take it they'll be doing the breaking, too?" Rhia still didn't like the sound of this. It might work, but it felt an awful lot like it might literally blow up in her face.

"That's the plan. And, I mean, you can help." She waved at the wall. "I'm sure they'll believe that you suffered a legitimate malfunction, on account of the condition of your ship."

"Hey!" Rhia let out a small growl. "The Lady Giddens is a fine ship and you'll not say otherwise!"

Amélie held up her paws. "Ok, sorry. But I mean, she's a, uhh, a private legitimate cargo hauler, and they aren't renowned for their plush maintenance budgets."

Rhia crossed her arms and sat back, grumbling. "I suppose not."

The other dog plowed on while she could. "So we rig her to lose power. Not too much, I mean we don't want to kill you or anything."

"I'm glad."

"Or destroy the cargo," Amélie continued.

"Oh no, certainly not that."

"In any case, we do that, you put down in the middle of nowhere, rig up a temporary fix, shove your cargo out the back to lighten your load, and head back to port. Easy! We collect the cargo and get you fixed up pro-bono, on account of that terrible misfortune you had, and you're on your way."

"What about the pay?" Rhia scratched an ear. "Feels like that's going out the back with the cargo."

"Uhh... I think we can arrange to pay you in cash. Obviously we'll have to mark the delivery incomplete so it doesn't look like we're doing what we're doing," Rhia said.

"You guys got enough CDP cash for that?" Rhia asked. "I figured you were getting paid in scrip."

"Well, like I said, we can arrange for it. The exchange rate for scrip is kinda shit, but we should be able to recover our payment to you in a bit and repay our folks for their cash." Amélie's expression didn't exactly inspire confidence, but she was clearly trying.

Rhia scratched her muzzle. "I guess we can try to make it work. It's not like I'm going to get paid if I don't."

"Great!" Amélie stood up and leaned over, offering a paw. "I appreciate you being so flexible."

Rhia shook the other dog's paw. "Sure, I guess." After a moment, she continued. "Ahh, what about you?"

"Oh, I'll make my own way home. We can come and go more or less as we please. Technically, CDP owns all the space ports, even if MdE operates pretty much the whole thing." Amélie shrugged. "Could be worse."

Rhia snorted as she stood. "It certainly could. Now let's go get to breaking my ship."

---

Even though it had been planned, Rhia did not enjoy the sensation when her ship suddenly lost power mid lift-off. On the plus side, with Amélie staying behind, or at least not flying with her, there was nobody around to hear her muttering imprecations on their judgment and mechanical skill followed by some wild speculations as to their ancestry. The Lady Giddens did not like flying on two and a half atmospheric thrusters, given that she nominally ran six. Rhia didn't care for it either, but she'd been through more almost-crash-landings than she cared to count and she knew which safety interlocks the creative -- or desperate -- pilot could disable to squeeze a little more power out of them. It wasn't exactly safe, but neither was crashing. She might prefer to die young in a fiery inferno rather than old in a prison cell -- her dad had lived, and died by that creed, so there was a tradition to uphold -- but Rhia figured she'd put it off as long as she could.

Klaxons screamed at her, the ship AI spoke calmly about angle of attack and vertical velocity, and the atmosphere buffeted the ship, but Rhia managed to squeeze enough power out of the thrusters to approximate a flat enough trajectory that when she flared the ship to bleed off the last of their speed, it only dropped a few meters straight down, rather than several hundred. The impact about jarred her out of her seat and ground her teeth together. If she'd not had her muzzle shut, she might have bitten something off. Rhia had met a dog once who'd bitten off their tongue in a crash, and while they'd gotten a new one, she'd decided to learn from their lesson.

"Take that, you shithole planet," she muttered, once the ship had stopped moving. She'd put down in a field close enough to where she'd planned for her not to care. They could walk. Or drive. Whatever. Wasn't her problem. Made for a better alibi, anyway.

Rhia flipped through the diagnostics, looking at a distressing number of red lights. That landing had knocked a few things loose, and it looked like one of the "disabled" thrusters had in fact failed quite authentically and taken out one of its neighbors.

"Well fuck. Not gonna be much acting here. Hope they can scrounge up a new thruster or two." She sighed as she unstrapped herself and stood. "Nothing for it, I guess."

It took her quite a while to inventory the very authentic damage the Lady Giddens now had. The two main landing struts would need replacement as soon as she got back to a real port. One of the thrusters was flat gone, which was an interesting failure mode. Power lines for two others had come loose and one of those had managed to shred itself in the process. At least none of the fuel lines had gone out, or she would have had that fiery death she'd been looking for.

The landing struts were also buried a good meter into the ground -- the field wasn't exactly a well-constructed landing pad, and while the struts had good-sized feet on them especially for landing in unimproved fields, unimproved usually meant "hard-packed dirt" and not "field of wildflowers." She was going to have to break out the e-tool -- the thought did not fill her with joy.

Rhia looked the list over one more time. "Yeah so... fuck all this cargo indeed." Limping back to port on four thrusters was going to suck; that cargo really was going to stay here. She hoped the miners had been paying attention to where she had really put down -- she really needed to get paid now.

The thought of payment made her grumble again. The whole business was certainly going to end up costing her money, so she hoped the miners got what they were after. Certainly fuck Métaux d'Étoiles. She was less sure on her feelings towards Agent Lombardi; the wolf was annoyingly good at his job, and she kinda respected that. He wasn't bad to look at, either, even if he was a cop. Hmph.

It was going to take Rhia hours to ditch all the cargo herself, and hours more to get the Lady Giddens back to something resembling flight-worthy. Nothing for it but to get stuck in, though, so she grabbed the pallet jack and started towards the first stack of cargo. She hoped those friendly mechanics back at the port she'd been promised materialized. Hell, maybe they'd even have some replacement thrusters. That'd be nice.

She snorted; she knew better. "Fat fuckin' chance," she muttered. "If they do, I'll kiss that fuckin' cop."

---

The cop was waiting for her when the ramp opened. Rhia couldn't hide her grimace. He responded with a smile that seemed almost genuine, which made her grimace even harder.

"Ah, Ms. Rhia," Agent Lombardi said as she stepped off the ramp, "So good to see you in one piece."

"Agent Lombardi." Rhia could not muster quite so much enthusiasm to see him. "It was a near thing. What brings you here?"

"Well," and here he seemed to show something like regret; it made Rhia nervous. "I'm grounding your ship."

"What?!" As the bark left her muzzle, Rhia reflected that was going to have to stay away from card games for a while.

He flicked his ears back at her outburst. "Your ship is crippled, Ms. Rhia. There's no way I can allow such a damaged vessel to depart without a thorough inspection and certified repair."

"Certified repair?!" She hated the way her voice was getting higher, and how her ears were pinned back, but after that landing it was just too much. "You mean after you squeeze me for more money!"

Lombardi offered an apologetic shrug, the bastard. "I have sent you a list of authorized mechanics."

She took a deep breath and read over the list. "There's only one name!"

He shrugged again. "It is a very small colony. I took the liberty of booking you a spot. He can see you in four days."

"Four d--!" She cut herself off so hard that her teeth clacked together. Rhia bounced in place as she tried to compose herself again and not growl openly at the cop.

"I'm sorry. Metaux d'Etoiles has, of course, waived your docking fees as a result of your emergency landing, and have even agreed to refuel your vessel free of charge."

She nodded. "I... I see. Well, I guess, thank you. So I guess I'm confined to my ship?" She was losing the battle against her growl.

He shook his head. "No. I ask that you not leave the port, of course, as there is that illegal strike going on, and they could become violent. Plus, you'll be available, should any questions arise."

"Of course." Rhia sighed. "I guess I'll see what the port has to offer."

"Not much, I'm afraid. And, one more thing." He held up a paw.

She rolled her eyes. "Of course there is."

"Just so." Lombardi looked almost apologetic. "I'm afraid that MdE has filed to have your accounts frozen."

"What the actual fuck?" She barked, her hackles going up and tail sticking out. She was well past hiding her reactions now.

"You were consorting with known agitators and that is within their rights." He shook his head, as though he was disappointed in her. Why he would have thought otherwise, who could know?

"God fucking actual damnit. So what the fuck am I supposed to do?" Rhia suspected the answer was going to be some variant on "get fucked over a barrel."

"Well," he began, "we can arrange for you to conduct some additional interviews to be sure you are not associated with the illegal strike. And once your ship is repaired, MdE would be happy to offer you some transport work, which of course would go a long way towards demonstrating your lack of association with the ICEM, and I'm sure would expedite the process of unlocking your accounts."

Rhia crossed her arms. "... This is extortion."

Lombardi countered by spreading his wide. "Hardly, Madame. It's simply business."

"And what am I supposed to do about food while I'm stuck here, if you've frozen my accounts?" she asked.

He smiled. That smiling bastard. "We're happy to offer you a per-diem and lodging for your stay, if you agree to our terms."

She opened her muzzle to reply, pausing a moment. They'd backed her into quite a corner. "I don't have much choice."

The wolf shrugged. "I'm sure you have choices, Madame Rhia, but I believe this is a very good one."

She considered him for a minute, then sighed. "Sure, Kommisar Lombardi, I might the fuck as well."

He ignored her jab and held out a pad. "Well then, put your print on the contract and we'll be good to go. The standard 24-hour review period is, of course, in effect. We are professionals, after all."

She held out her paw and felt the scrape of the DNA reader. She'd have the ship's legal applications review it, but she was pretty sure there wasn't much she could do. "Ok then."

Lombardi held out a chit. "Welcome aboard, Madame Rhia. I'm sure you'll find that Metaux d'Etoiles is a very fair client."

Rhia snorted, but took the chit. "Oh, I'm sure. Glasshatch rating of 5.0, right?"

The wolf chuckled quietly. "Something like that."

Lombardi turned and left, and Rhia hit the button to close the hatch, watching him go until he disappeared behind the patch. This was not at all how she'd imagine legitimate work shaping up. Still, maybe she could figure out how to get paid and stick it to MdE at the same time. It was worth a shot.